What with everything else that’s going on, it seems that the politicians can’t wait to see how fast they can drive the entire world into chaos and bankruptcy . . . not necessarily in that order:
• A Condition of Dependency. One definition of slavery is a condition of permanent dependency. That’s why Aristotle (not Marx) called nominally free workers who own nothing but their labor “masterless slaves.” Marx just borrowed the concept and applied to the industrial system. Now there appears to be a move to force as many people as possible into a permanent — and costly — dependency on the State, at least according to Nick Stehle in The Wall Street Journal (“Hooked on Federal Checks,” WSJ, 08/19/21, A-17). According to Stehle, once the government makes the program of giving out what amounts to a family allowance to “middle class” families, they will vote to keep the money coming in, turning themselves into “mere creatures of the State,” accepting anything the government chooses to dish out to keep the cash coming in. Who, after all, is going to ask the government NOT to give them “free” money? The sad part is that some of the people most insistent on having the government create endless amounts of funny money (i.e., what amounts to legal counterfeiting with money issued by the government backed only by government debt) are firmly opposed to creating new money backed by private sector hard assets (i.e., something with actual value instead of empty promises) to finance expanded capital ownership by every citizen so they can support themselves through their own efforts without government assistance, except perhaps in an emergency. That is what the Economic Democracy Act is intended to do, and it is based on sound principles of finance as well as natural law, not on some politician’s wishful thinking and vote buying.
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| Why not invest rather than save? |
• Saving Too Much for
Retirement? First, they keep telling
you people aren’t saving enough for retirement . . . but then they warn us that
if
you try to save enough you will be penalized! Instead of thinking this is all a Catch-22 to
ensure your continuing dependency on the State and the politicians so that they
can count on your vote to secure your income, we might want to take a step back
and re-think this whole retirement schtick.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution — and, actually, for quite some time
after — hardly anyone thought in ways that we today think of as “normal,” i.e.,
go to school to qualify for a “good job,” work for forty years, and then retire
with a pension supplemented with whatever you might have managed to save up for
your old age. Instead, most people
thought in terms of owning productive assets, such as a farm or a business,
which would either keep on generating income all their lives, or if sold, would
provide the proceeds to purchase other income-generating assets to provide a
living income. “Saving for your old age”
was what non-owning workers did. We need
to get back to thinking in terms of investing for life instead of saving for
retirement, and the
Economic Democracy Act is one way to do it.
 |
| Walter Reuther |
• Another Reason Ownership is a Good Idea. Once again, the usual ideas about how people are to be compensated for productive work is taking a beating. It seems that the National Biscuit Company (which, despite its name, is privately owned) is attempting to change their compensation system for unionized workers. Naturally, the workers are on strike, endangering the supply of Oreo cookies and Ritz crackers. Too bad nobody paid any attention to the late Walter Reuther when he testified before Congress that constantly raising fixed wages and benefits was a losing proposition. As he said, “The breakdown in collective bargaining in recent years is due to the difficulty of labor and management trying to equate the relative equity of the worker and the stockholder and the consumer in advance of the facts…. If the workers get too much, then the argument is that that triggers inflationary pressures, and the counter argument is that if they don’t get their equity, then we have a recession because of inadequate purchasing power. We believe this approach (progress sharing) is a rational approach because you cooperate in creating the abundance that makes the progress possible, and then you share that progress after the fact, and not before the fact. Profit sharing would resolve the conflict between management apprehensions and worker expectations on the basis of solid economic facts as they materialize rather than on the basis of speculation as to what the future might hold…. If the workers had definite assurance of equitable shares in the profits of the corporations that employ them, they would see less need to seek an equitable balance between their gains and soaring profits through augmented increases in basic wage rates. This would be a desirable result from the standpoint of stabilization policy because profit sharing does not increase costs. Since profits are a residual, after all costs have been met, and since their size is not determinable until after customers have paid the prices charged for the firm’s products, profit sharing as such cannot be said to have any inflationary impact upon costs and prices…. Profit sharing in the form of stock distributions to workers would help to democratize the ownership of America’s vast corporate wealth.” (Testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, February 20, 1967.)
• Put LeVar Burton in Jeopardy! We mean, uh, ON Jeopardy. It seems that a new poll shows that LeVar Burton was far and away the game show fans’ Numero Uno choice as permanent host. We demand justice for game show hosts as well as for economics and society!
• Hortense and Her Whos. In case you’ve been wondering how you might advance the Just Third Way by introducing it to legislators at any and all levels of government, we’ve made it easy for you, with the “Hortense Hears Three Whos” initiative. Visit the explanatory website, and consider downloading the postcard to send to people in government. Don’t worry if you think they won’t be open to it, as the postcard is intended to get them to open their eyes.
• Economic Personalism Landing Page. A landing page for CESJ’s latest publication, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, has been created and can be accessed by clicking on this link. Everyone is encouraged to visit the page and send the link out to their networks.
"Don't throw this one away with great force."
• Economic Personalism. When you purchase a copy of Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, be sure you post a review after you’ve read it. It is available on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble at the cover price of $10 per copy. You can also download the free copy in .pdf available from the CESJ website. If you’d like to order in bulk (i.e., ten or more copies) at the wholesale price, send an email to publications@cesj.org for details. CESJ members get a $2 rebate per copy on submission of proof of purchase. Wholesale case lots of 52 copies are available at $350, plus shipping (whole case lots ONLY). Prices are in U.S. dollars.
• Sensus Fidelium Videos, Update. CESJ’s series of videos for Sensus Fidelium are doing very well, with over 150,000 total views. The latest Sensus Fidelium video is “The Four Pillars of a Just Market Economy.” The video is part of the series on the book, Economic Personalism. The latest completed series on “the Great Reset” can be found on the “Playlist” for the series. The previous series of sixteen videos on socialism is available by clicking on the link: “Socialism, Modernism, and the New Age,” along with some book reviews and other selected topics. For “interfaith” presentations to a Catholic audience they’ve proved to be popular, edging up to 150,000 views to date. They aren’t really “Just Third Way videos,” but they do incorporate a Just Third Way perspective. You can access the playlist for the entire series The point of the videos is to explain how socialism and socialist assumptions got such a stranglehold on the understanding of the role of the State and thus the interpretation of Catholic social teaching, and even the way non-Catholics and even non-Christians understand the roles of Church, State, and Family, and the human person’s place in society.
• Shop online and support CESJ’s work! Did you know that by making your purchases through the Amazon Smile program, Amazon will make a contribution to CESJ? Here’s how: First, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your Amazon account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon, you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using our secure server” button.) Once you have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice Arlington.” If you type anything else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift through. Once you’ve typed (or copied and pasted) “Center for Economic and Social Justice Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you will be taken to the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• Blog Readership. We have had visitors from 29 different countries and 38 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, India, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. The most popular postings this past week in descending order were “The Characteristics of Social Justice,” “The Rise and Development of Solidarism,” “Solidarism, Socialism, and Social Justice,” “News from the Network, Vol. 14, No. 32,” and “Economic Personalism is Applied Solidarism.”
Those are the happenings for this week, at least those that we know about. If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into the next “issue.” Due to imprudent language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled comments.
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